It offered an excuse to show the nudity of three of
its Caucasian actors:

Andy Huben (Daryl Hannah), the wife of
fundamentalist missionary husband Leslie (John Lithgow), who performed
a nude bathing scene in a jungle pool, and then didn't realize
she was being spied upon and approached while she rested next to
a gigantic tree root - she reciprocated a wild kiss by Lewis before
running off

Lewis Moon (Tom Berenger), an American
pilot (and half-Cheyenne Indian) who had returned to his wild tribal
roots, stripped naked and entered the Nairuna village escorted
by tribesmen - where he was accepted as a God

Hazel Quarrier (43 year-old Kathy Bates), as a repressed
missionary's wife who had lost her mind after her
son's death from blackwater fever; she performed an unflattering
nude native dance (partially clothed with a thatch of leaves and layers
of mud)

Jacques Rivette's very-lengthy (almost four hour) drama, with minimal dialogue,
was nominated for the Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and won the Grand Prize of the Jury award.

It told about the creative process regarding an uninspired,
married, impatient and aging French artist-painter Edouard Frenhofer
(Michel Piccoli) who suddenly returned to work on an abandoned, neglected
masterpiece of ten years - the painting was known as "La
Belle Noiseuse."

He returned to work when offered to paint the attractive girlfriend (of three years) of gifted young artist Nicolas Wartel (David Bursztein) who was visiting at his rural Provence chateau - she was a strong-willed model and aspiring writer named Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart). Ten years earlier, Frenhofer's original and favorite model was his wife Elizabeth (Jane Birkin). But then his inspiration abruptly ended and it was left unfinished. Marianne, his newly-acquired muse, was his next model - suggested and volunteered by Nicolas.

In his vast, long-neglected stone-walled studio, Frenhofer began by making multiple artistic sketches of Marianne, the first two with her clothed. Then, he asked her to put on a dressing gown, after which she was required to pose nude for the remainder of their time together. She was unaware that he wanted to keep her as a model for more than one day, explaining that he felt "paralyzed" and as awkward as she did the first day. She was reluctant ("I'm not made for it"), but then acquiesed.

Marianne (Emmanuelle Beart) Posing Nude as a Muse
for an Artist

On the second day, he made many more preliminary sketches of her in various naked poses, as he attempted to capture her essence. Elizabeth assured Nicolas: "Don't worry. Frenho's a gentleman. You don't have to be afraid." She further explained her own posing for him years earlier before they married: "I hadn't known him at all. I did it to pay for my studies..." During the long session on the second day, Marianne complained of having to pose in painful, demanding, contorted, cramping and unmoving positions, but then took the artist's challenge seriously. Frenhofer remembered: "In the past, they tied up the models. They hanged them by their wrists or ankles to keep the pose." He also described his painting of Liz: "Anyway, at first I wanted her, before wanting to paint her. For the first time, I was scared. The fear became the driving force behind what I did." Toward the end of the second day of posing, he told Marianne his goal - to possess her from the inside out:

"I'll break you to pieces... I'll get you out of
your body...get you out of your carcass....I want to know and see
the inside of your body." As he touched her to set her postures,
he told her: "I don't care about your breasts, legs, your
lips... I want more. I want everything. The blood, the fire, the
ice... All that's inside your body. I'll take it all. I'll get
it out of you and put it into this frame...I'll get to know what's
inside under your thin surface. I want the invisible. No, it's
not that! I want - It's not me who wants. It's the line, the stroke.
Nobody knows what a stroke is. And I'm after it. Where am I going?
To the sky? Why not? Why wouldn't a stroke burst the sky?...It's
only just begun. No more breasts, no more stomach, no more thighs,
no more buttocks! Whirlwinds! Galaxies, the ebb and the flow...Black
holes! The original hubbub, have you never heard of it? That's
what I always wanted from you. I'm going to crumble you, you're
going to break up. We'll see what's left of you when you forget
everything. Don't worry, you'll get it back if you still want it."

After his long tirade, she responded: "You're rotten." He replied: "I want nothing, I told you. It's the painting. You and I, we're just involved. It's going to be a whirlwind, a cataract, a maelstrom. Faster faster, until you see nothing, feel nothing." She broke down crying as the day's work temporarily paused. When they began again, he thought about quitting, but she was by now deeply engaged and determined to prevent him from despairing ("We can go on further"). At the end of the day, she resolutely told him: "You're scared. I'm not scared anymore" and she was determined to proceed.

Before the third day's session, Elizabeth warned Marianne: "Be careful...It (his work) can cause a lot of damage to people....If he wants to paint your face, refuse." During their next encounter in the studio (when she defiantly chose her own positions for the first time), Marianne stated that it was over between her and her boyfriend, calling him a bastard and a fool ("my life's coming to a stop"). Feeling unloved, Elizabeth (who was becoming more and more disconsolate, tormented and jealous because of her husband's rapt attention to his model), compared her painting of 10 years earlier with the current one. She told him: "What you've done is diminishing us. You've made us sick of each other." She sensed her husband's sadness about his new project: "But now it's not a new beginning. It's the end."

On the fourth day of painting, Frenhofer again took charge of his model for the last session. He took out a long-abandoned painting of Liz and began to reimagine it by painting over it with images of Marianne. After Nicolas' pretty sister Julienne (Marianne Denicourt) arrived, she was concerned about her brother, but Elizabeth assured her: "He thinks they're going to have, how do you call it, an affair or something. I think he's wrong, but he's right to worry....It's not the flesh that's shameless, it's not the nudity, it's something else." She described her own experience as a model: "First he wanted to paint me because he loved me, and then...Then because he loved me, he didn't want to paint me. It was me or painting, that's what he said."

When the painting was finished after the marathon battle of wills, Marianne described its stunning image to Julienne: "A thing which was cold and dry -- it was me." Frenhofer secretly sealed the painting - unseen - behind a newly-laid brick wall ("It doesn't exist"), and then presented another faceless painting as the finished product, claiming: "It's my first posthumous work." In voice-over, Marianne narrated: "Marianne put on her old mask again or maybe she took a new one...It used to be me," but then confided in Elizabeth: "I'm not unaware any more."

Marianne
(Emmanuelle Beart)
Artist-Painter Edouard

Boyz 'N the Hood (1991)

Writer/director John Singleton's coming-of-age tale
was set in South Central Los Angeles. Singleton became the first African-American and the youngest filmmaker to be nominated as Best
Director for this film.

One of the subplots involved a black teen couple who
eventually lost their virginity together after she initially resisted
his advances due to her Catholic faith beliefs:

Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding, Jr.)

Brandi (Nia Long)

Tre was previously
cautioned by his stern father Furious (Larry Fishburne):

"Any
fool with a dick can make a baby, but only a real man can raise his
children."

While
kissing Brandi as she felt empathy for his exasperation over more
gang violence, he asked two questions hinting at marriage and commitment
with her: "What
do you think about people getting married while they're still in
college?" and "Are you sure you're down for this?" She
agreed to proceed, but was worried: "I don't
want to get pregnant," while
he was touching her gold-cross necklace and assuring her: "You
won't."

Tre and Brandi
(Nia Long)

Carnal Crimes (1991)

Director Gregory Dark's (aka Alexander Hippolyte) film
was the first fully soft-core erotic exploitation thriller, involving
sex, murder and blackmail. Cult B-movie siren Julie Strain was featured
in a short cameo role as Ingrid, who had sex with one of the main characters
(Renny) in a Japanese restaurant bathroom.

The sophisticated noir-romance hybrid film told about
a woman caught a loveless marriage in LA:

The film's
twist was that Elise's perverted husband Stanley had set up his wife
with the mysterious photographer (suspected of being a serial killer)
to have video shot (used as blackmail), so that he could coax or lure
her into S&M.

Ingrid
(Julie Strain) Blonde Elise
(Linda Carol)

Close My Eyes (1991,
UK)

Writer/director Stephen Poliakoff's
R-rated British drama was about forbidden incestual love, with the tagline:

There are some relationships so taboo, they're irresistible.

It told
about two adult siblings, recently-reunited with each other:

Richard (Clive Owen), a successful architect and
town planner

his older sister Natalie Gillespie (Saskia Reeves)

Each grew up with a different parent after their parents
divorced. Natalie was married to older, affluent
entrepreneur and stock analyst Sinclair Bryant (Alan Rickman).

They subsequently engaged in an ill-fated love affair
("strange
bond")
in London during a sultry summer. Although Natalie was married,
the duo were overwhelmingly attracted to each other and engaged in
a passionately physical, clandestine sexual encounter in his apartment.

Incestual Sex Between Natalie (Saskia Reeves) and
Her Brother

Afterwards,
Natalie became guilt-ridden and insisted that her brother find a
more appropriate partner, but he forced her to continue their incestuous
pairing - until the unbelievable truth finally came out.

Natalie
(Saskia Reeves)

Delicatessen (1991, Fr.)

This film became well-known for its montage set-piece
called the "Squeaky Bedsprings" scene. It was a clever
and non-explicit sex scene that took place in a tenement apartment
building above a ground floor butcher's shop/delicatessen.

Above him as newly-hired handyman and circus clown
Louison (Dominique Pinon) painted the ceiling with a roller, the
cannibalistic butcher/landlord Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) made
love to his mistress Mme. Plusse (Karin Viard) on a squeaky bed ("squeak
squeak"). Other tenants kept synchronized in symphonic rhythm
to the squeaking with an increasingly sped-up tempo:

They had sex during a late-night, after-dinner work session
at the office - on one of the drafting tables. When Flipper
confided in his high-school teacher/neighbor Cyrus (Spike Lee) about the
affair with Angie, his reaction was: "H-bomb.
H-bomb...Nuclear holocaust!"

Soon afterwards, their scandalous and problematic liaison,
even though they moved in together, was eventually broken apart by
their two neighborhoods (relatives and friends): Sugar Hill in Harlem
(Flipper's home) and Bensonhurst (Angie's home) in Brooklyn.

Flipper and Angie
(Annabella Sciorra)

Mississippi Masala (1991)

Director Mira Nair's R-rated romantic drama (a Romeo
and Juliet, or West Side Story tale), set in the Mississippi
bayous of the American South, told of the inter-racial, forbidden
romance between an African-American couple:

a small carpet-cleaner business owner Demetrius
Williams (Denzel Washington)

She was the daughter of Indian expatriates who dominated
the area's motel industry.

Although their dating and relationship was greeted
with shock and indignation, they engaged in a secret and erotic affair,
despite the racial tension, after Demetrius called Mina and expressed
his potent desire for her sensuality while both were in their own
beds.

And later, they became entwined for hot love-making
during a weekend in a Biloxi beachside hotel.

Mina
(Sarita Choudhury)

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Writer/director Gus Van Sant's off-beat, buddy/road independent
film was a modern reworking of William Shakespeare's Henry IV. It
featured young male street hustler Mike Waters (River Phoenix) in the
Pacific Northwest who suffered from narcolepsy.

In a scene during the film's credits (with Tex Owens' Cattle Call cowboy
song sung by Eddie Arnold in the background), he was apparently reclined
backward in a chair as he received fellatio from a male client. As
he strained - with the camera only showing his face - various surreal
images were displayed from his mind:

Mike in his mother's arms as
she held his head in her lap and assured him ("Don't worry. Everything's
gonna be alright")

clouds churning across the sky over a rural two-lane
road as sunset approached

salmon leaping upstream to get back to their
place of birth

and then a wooden barn crashing to the ground from
the sky, signifying that he had orgasmed

As the camera panned down
his body, two $10s were thrown as payment onto his bare chest by
a john named Walt (Robert Lee Pitchlynn). The bills slid down into
his crotch area as he fastened his blue jeans. He was forced to beg
for another $10 bill as he crouched outside the customer's toilet
door.

In another scene, the males (Mike and his friend Scott
(Keanu Reeves) and others) displayed on the covers of porn magazines
in an adult book store came to life and talked to each other.

Poison (1991)

Director Todd Haynes' first full-length feature was
this NC-17 rated film - part of the Queer Cinema movement, with the
title referring to the 'poisonous' effects of sex.

The film was attacked by right-wing, reactionary Christian
fundamentalist groups as part of their family-values campaign against "government-funded
pornography" (the film was funded, in part, by the National
Endowment of the Arts). In particular, there were complaints about
a homosexual scene, an anal rape scene,
and for a short explicit view of an erection (removed in the unrated
and R-rated versions).

The most controversial
of its three, non-linear interwoven stories (adapting French Jean
Genet's homoerotic writings and only film Un Chant d'Amour)
was titled "Homo." The story was told with schoolyard flashbacks
and vignettes. One of the most disturbing segments was the notorious
spitting scene, in which a group of guys forced one man to hold his
mouth open as they tried to spit into it from a distance.

The most memorable segment was set in a prison where
young thief John Broom (Scott Renderer) experienced life-long obsessed
homosexual feelings for fellow inmate Jack Bolton (James Lyons).
In a nighttime scene in which the prisoners were sleeping side by
side, Broom tentatively and erotically touched Bolton, and was surprised
to have his touch reciprocated.

Spitting SceneAnal Rape Scene

Prospero's Books (1991,
UK/Fr.)

Eccentric arthouse director
Peter Greenaway deconstructed and radically retold Shakespeare's final
play The
Tempest in
this lurid, lavish, and visually stunning R-rated film production and
fantasy drama. The visual orgy also featured a pop-minimalist score by
Michael Nyman.

The bacchanalian pretentious spectacle was advertised
as containing copious full-frontal nudity at various times (provided
by hundreds of unclad extras of both sexes as nude dancing nymphs).
Its tagline described the film's content:

A Magician's Spell. The Innocence of Young Love and
a Dream of Revenge Unite to Create a Tempest

The protagonist was magician Prospero (John Gielgud),
the banished Duke of Milan (due to Alonso, the King of Naples) who
fled in exile twelve years earlier to a small Mediterranean
island with his fifteen year-old daughter, Miranda (Isabelle Pasco)
and twenty-four beloved Shakespeare books. The
many arcane books included
"A Book of Water," "A Book of Mirrors," "A
Book of Utopias," and
"A Book of Mythologies."

During the opening credits with a lengthy traveling
shot moving from left to right, the books were placed on tables and
passed from one naked spirit/character to the next, and then opened
and read.

The multi-media film began with nude young boy-sprite
Ariel urinating into the Roman bath-pool where Prospero (with a toy
ship in his hands) bathed and wrote, and an underwater nude ballet
sequence. Most of the dialogue (including the lines
of other characters) was spoken or narrated by the God-like Prospero,
as he wrote out (or read) the calligraphic letters (with his voice-over)
while flipping through the pages/contents of the many books. He manipulated,
with magical control, the characters of his drama as well as all the
resident fairies, sprites, nymphs and monsters.

Castaway Prospero imagined
that he had created the play The Tempest, and the products of
his vivid imagination became the action of the film. Prospero
invoked a tempest to bring his usurping brother Antonio, as well as
Alonso, the king of Naples and his son Ferdinand to the shores of the
island, where Prospero planned to seek revenge against his turncoat
compatriot-enemies. He was also dealing with a deadly plot conceived
by primitive, deformed and beast-like Caliban (Michael Clark), the
son of witch Sycorax.

With the help of sorcerer's sprite Ariel (in another
form), Prospero's daughter Miranda fell in love with Ferdinand, the
son of his chief enemy, and they planned to marry. Prospero was moved
by his brother Antonio's remorse (thinking Ferdinand was dead), forgave
him, and decided to forego or abandon his vengeance against his cohorts.

Rambling Rose (1991)

Director Martha Coolidge's coming-of-age
dramatic tale was set in the South (Glenville, Georgia) during the
mid-30s Depression era, a tale adapted from Calder Willingham's 1972
novel. The film was told as a flashback from the year 1971, by Southerner
Willcox Hillyer (John Heard) who had returned to his childhood home
where "Rose"
had made such an impact on his early life ("She was the first
person I ever loved outside members of my own family. But as my father
said, she caused one hell of a damnable commotion").

It told about a scandalous, sexually-precocious, uneducated,
troubled, love-seeking young woman:

She was employed as a maid-domestic servant in the
household of a Southern family, run by the proper head
of household Mr. 'Daddy' Hillyer (Robert Duvall) and his intelligent,
sensitive and feminist wife "Mother" (Diane Ladd, Dern's real-life
mother). She was graciously greeted: "Rosebud, I swear to God. You
are as graceful as a capital letter S. You will adorn our house.
You will give a glow and a shine to these old walls."

Inevitably, she tempted or bewitched "Daddy," threw
herself at him, declared her love and demanded a kiss. Although he
kissed her while fondling her right breast with one hand (while the
young son spied on them through a door crack), he self-righteously
resisted and ordered her: "Put
your damn tit back in your dress. Replace that tit." He claimed: "I
am standing at Thermopylae...The Persians shall not pass."

"Daddy"
also found himself fending off her many eager male suitors, one of
whom snuck into the hosue - she claimed she only wanted love,
not sex. The young boy in the family, sexually-inquisitive 13 year-old "Buddy" Hillyer
(Lukas Haas), was also intrigued and smitten by her, and in one realistic,
late-night scene in bed, she reluctantly taught him about the female
anatomy by letting him sexually touch her privates under her clothes.
At first, she told him: "You're just a child and wouldn't
understand, but that kind of thing can stir a girl up." As
he touched her, he asked: "Am I hurtin' you?" and as she breathed
deeply, she responded: "No. No you're not hurtin' me. You'd just
better quit it, Buddy, is all..." before she was brought to a shuddering
orgasm. Afterwards, he asked: "What's the matter, Rose? Are you
sick or somethin'?" She replied: "I've robbed the cradle and fell
into Hell."

Inevitably in
the film's most pivotal scene, it came down to whether "Daddy" would
allow a doctor to perform radical surgery with a hysterectomy, to cure
Rose of "uncontrollable
sexual impulses" (or nymphomania). "Mother" stood up
to the surgeon:
"If you harm that little girl, I'll ruin you."

In the film's final lines, widower "Daddy" described
'Rose's' lasting influence: "Rose isn't dead, son, not really. Some
of us die, some of us don't. Rose lives! Don't worry about it, boy.
She's at rest with Mother and the creator of the universe. She's at
rest with Mother."

Producer/director William A. Graham's romantic adventure
film was a sequel to the more highly-tauted Blue Lagoon (1980),
which starred Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. Its tagline promised:
"Return to the Romance, Return to the Adventure..." The original film's
director Randal Kleiser served as the film's executive producer.

It told the same sanitized story of two young children
in the next generation (one of them was the male offspring of one of
the original castaways) who were again shipwrecked on the same South
Pacific tropical island:

Richard Lestrange (Brian Krause), orphaned, the son
of Richard (Christopher Atkins) and Emmeline (Brooke Shields) from
the earlier film

There was only discreet and minor nudity in the film,
allowing the film to appeal to a wider PG-13 audience.

Ship-wrecked Lilli Growing Up on a Tropical Island

Young Lilli
(Courtney Phillips)

Teenaged Lilli
(Milla Jovovich)

DVD version

VHS version

The film explored
the same themes as the two children (Courtney Phillips and Garette Ratliff
Henson) grew into young teens, who experienced the onset of puberty
and changing bodies (with Lilli's first menstrual period and Richard's
erections). Soon after, the two became passionate lovers and exchanged
wedding vows. The film concluded with the two having a baby child together
and remaining on the island, although they had an opportunity to return
to civilization. The last lines of the film confirmed their choice:

Lilli: "I won't let it be born in civilization. I
want it to be born right here. Where there's no evil, and no lies,
and no guns."
Richard:
"You're right. We'll stay here. Just the three of us. I love you, Lilli."

Lilli
(Milla Jovovich)

La Riffa (1991, It.) (aka The Raffle)

Writer/director Francesco Laudidio was responsible for
bringing the voluptuous actress Monica Bellucci first to the
screen in this Italian drama - her first starring or major film
role. Before entering films in the 1990s, Monica
Bellucci had started out as a very curvy Italian model - unusual in
the high-fashion world due to her Mediterranean features and her full
breasts. Interestingly, her role in this film was about the commercialization
of her beauty through a high-stakes raffle.

The film was inspired by the last episode
(filmed by Vittorio de Sica) of the Italian film Boccaccio '70
(1962),
in which her role was played by Sophia Loren (as Zoe).

The 27 year-old actress played the part of Francesca,
a very beautiful, high-society female who became a widow and penniless
after her rich husband (discovered later to be unfaithful and indebted)
died in an auto accident. She was forced to support herself (and her
young daughter), and advised to sell all of her possessions (house,
jewels, furs, yacht) to survive for awhile. Afterwards,
without a job or secure future, she decided to become the prize in
a raffle bid upon by twenty wealthy men, in which the winner was entitled
to live with her for 4 years and demand whatever he wanted.

The Beautiful Francesca (young Monica Bellucci)

Many lecherous friends of her husband, and her own lawyer
Cesare (Massimo Ghini), all vied to win her at the same time that she
fell in love with a new boyfriend Antonio (Giulio Scarpati). As the
film concluded, she decided to run away with her daughter and escape
becoming victimized by a lottery winner.

[Note: Admitting that she had never shied away from posing
naked, Bellucci went on to display more of her curves in such films
as Coppola's Bram
Stoker's Dracula (1992), and she took the lead role in director
Giuseppe Tornatore's Miramax-financed Malena (2000, It.) -
which featured numerous nude scenes when she became the object of erotic
fantasies of a young 13 year-old boy in a 1940s Sicilian village. She
also appeared in The Matrix Reloaded
(2003) and The Matrix Revolutions
(2003) sequels, in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ as
Mary Magdalene, and in Gaspar Noe's controversial Irreversible
(2002) - in which she was a rape victim in an uninterrupted nine-minute
rape scene.]

Francesca
(Monica Bellucci)

The
Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The taut,
suspenseful, Best Picture-winning psychological thriller The
Silence of the Lambs (1991) was directed by Jonathan Demme
and written by Ted Tally. It told of a trans-sexual killer named
Jame Gumb ("Buffalo Bill") (Ted Levine), who
selected overweight women as his victims, to be skinned after they
were kidnapped and forced to lose weight.

He would then peel (or flay)
off their loose skin and make a 'suit' for himself. In one scene, 'Buffalo
Bill' tucked his genitals behind his legs to appear female, and pretended
to be a Death's-head Hawkmoth with his arms extended.

The tense film was
a major commercial and critical success,
although gay groups complained about its stereotypical and negative
depiction of the killer in the finale. They believed
that the film equated homosexuality and transgenderism with insanity
and serial murder.

This was despite the fact that Hannibal Lecter (Anthony
Hopkins) had insisted that Buffalo Bill, who had suffered a life
of abuse, was not a real transsexual but only believed that he was.

They fled after an ugly threatened rape incident in
the Silver Bullet roadhouse parking lot that led to a retaliatory
killing. Along the way driving a 1966 Ford ThunderBird convertible,
they picked up hitchhiker J.D. (Brad Pitt in a star-making role),
a good-looking
hunk and redneck cowboy During a motel fling
in Room 133 with Thelma when he came in from a rainstorm, he told
her he'd broken parole and had robbed a number of small businesses
- he flaunted a hair dryer as a gun when he demonstrated his "gentlemanly" technique. The "outlaw" sweet-talked
Thelma with:

"I may be an outlaw, darlin', but, uh, you're the
one stealin' my heart."

The camera panned up J.D.'s chiseled
abs (shot from the female point of view) as he stood at the foot
of the bed, pulled Thelma's bare legs toward him, kissed the sensitive
area above her pantied crotch, and then proceeded to make passionate
and energetic love to her on top of the room's dresser - to the sound
of Chris Whitley singing Kick the Stones.

Thelma (Geena Davis) with J.D. (Brad Pitt)

The next morning
in the motel's coffee shop, Thelma showed Louise her hickie and admitted
to Louise that she had her first orgasm:

Thelma: "I finally understand
what all the fuss is about now. It's just like a whole 'nother ballgame."
Louise (happily): "I'm so happy for you.
That's great. I really am. You finally got laid properly. That's sweet."

But on departing,
they were shocked to discover that J.D. had stolen their "future" money
that they had left on the nightstand next to the bed, forcing them
into a life of crime.

In the film's conclusion, before the two fugitives
drove their convertible into the Grand Canyon
(and oblivion), Thelma had urged: "Let's not get caught... Let's
keep goin'." Louise asked: "You sure?" They kissed
each other, and then grasped hands as they met their fate, taking
off in a swirl of dust.

Thelma & Louise
To the Death at the
Grand Canyon

Whore (1991) (aka If
You're Afraid to Say It, Just See It)

Director
Ken Russell's third American film was this pseudo-documentary drama -
an uncompromising, realistically bleak look at the dehumanizing,
promiscuous occupation of prostitution - advertised as the "flipside
to Pretty Woman." The film was available in three versions
(82-minute R and NC-17 version, and longer 92-minute European version).
A film with cheap production values and sloppy editing, it included
latent lesbianism and violent gang-rape in a van.

It examined the life of jaded LA streetwalker Liz
(Theresa Russell) as she often talked directly to the camera through
flashbacks. While having a drink at a strip club, among other things,
she spoke about her experiences, including her bad marriage, lewd
sexual encounters, dirty talk and abuse from:

Charlie (Frank Smith), her
no-good drunk husband

Blake (Benjamin Mouton), her rough, cruel and controlling
LA pimp

cops, other prostitutes
and her clients-customers

In one scene, she unzipped the back of her skirt
for sex in the rear of a car with an elderly client (Charles Macaulay)
- while mocking his sexual excitement, and in another, she complained
to her pimp about a tough workout (sit-ups on an incline bench) while
wearing lingerie, but then had hot-tub sex with him afterwards.

It told
about a sexually-starved, free-spirited wife Zandalee ("Zan")
Martin (former model Erika Anderson, often naked) living
in New Orleans, who was obviously bored by her life and impotent marriage
to southern-drawling, emotionally-distant poet-husband Thierry Martin
(co-producer/actor Judge Reinhold) who had turned corporate media executive
at Southern Comm after the death of his father a year earlier.

She met Thierry's long-haired, hipster painter and childhood friend Johnny Collins (Nicolas Cage) (with a goatee and mustache) when he appeared in town for a visit. Johnny's first scene at a bachelor party found him licking whipped cream off a stripper's chest ("He always had a sweet tooth"). The spirited Johnny was crude and pretentious at the same time: "Without creativity, without life, then you are truly unable to go straight up the devil's ass, look him right in the face, smile, and survive," and

"When that big red snatch is coming right up against your face like a freight train, it's hard to paint, I tell you what. You always felt you had to tell them the story of your life in order to f--k them, didn't you?"

After attending a "Bourbon Street" sex show, horny Zandalee asked her husband to experiment sexually ("I want you like we used to want"). She coaxed him to try to make love anally, but he was unfulfilling to her - without the power both to make love or write (he admitted: "I'm just paralyzed. A paraplegic of the soul"). The frustrated, vixenish wife began to pleasure herself in front of him to humiliate him, not understanding his lack of desire. Soon, she reluctantly turned to the selfishly-hedonistic, predatory Johnny for uninhibited and passionate sexual encounters. He approached her:

"We're inevitable. I wanna shake you naked and eat
you alive, Zandalee... Nobody will be hurt from it because it is
what it is...Just as simple as that. You want it, and I want to give
it. A perfect relationship."

When she disagreed: "That's not a relationship," he kept advancing: "You know what I like? I like it when you don't wear anything under." She removed her panties and he kissed her as he stood her up against a wrought-iron gate in an alleyway. He then made forceful, thrusting and grinding love to her in his art studio. Afterwards in a colorful body-painting scene, when she denied being a "sad woman" or sexually dissatisfied - he dipped his index finger in blue paint and sensually drew a line down between her bare breasts (in close-up), through her belly button and to the top of her pubic hair.

Later, in a dinner scene with the Thierrys which he attended with ditzy date Remy (Marisa Tomei) - while Johnny and Zandalee were in the kitchen getting dessert, she called him a "dumb coon-ass prick." He suggested: "Take my dumb coon-ass prick inside of you with your husband in the next room" -- and they risked coupling together on the washer-dryer in the laundry room.

Eventually, Zandalee was feeling guilty about their surreptitious, destructive relationship and feeling like she had become white trash ("I can't do this anymore! I can't be what you want me to be...It's not me!"), but he insisted (as he massaged her breasts): "Yes, you can...You can be what I want you to be. You just have to relax. When I'm inside you, I feel us at the edge of the universe, traveling, exploring." He applied a powdery drug substance to Zandalee's nether regions from behind ("Where else can you express this need to free our bodies. We're gonna f--k like animals in the altar of the primal").

Zandalee with Johnny (Nicolas Cage)

More memorable scenes included sex in a church cathedral confessional booth where he angrily took the clothed Zandalee from behind ("Are we in the real church? Isn't this the way he really shows Himself to us?"). Afterwards, he looked upward: "Thank you, Father." Their
self-destructive affair led to Johnny's request that she leave her
husband and live with him, although she refused and recommitted herself
to her marriage. Obsessed by Zandalee, drugged-up Johnny pursued the
married couple to the bayou where they went to patch up their relationship, "start clean," wear flowers in their hair, and make love after many months ("See, all our parts work").

A tragic end came to them - the cuckolded husband committed suicide in the bayou when he plunged into the water from the speeding boat driven by Johnny - he drowned when he wouldn't allow himself to be saved ("He wanted to be let go"). Back in New Orleans after her husband's burial, Johnny expressed his desperation by slashing his art canvasses (screaming: "Die!") and coating himself in black paint ("Black it out!"). He confessed to Zandalee his longing for her: "I can't get you out of me" - but she slapped him: "You don't know anything about love." And then Zandalee sacrificially jumped in front of a bullet intended for indebted Johnny, in a drive-by shooting by a drug lord who yelled out: "You gotta make accounts payable, man." She died in his arms on the street, after which he carried her limp body to the nearby cathedral.